THE BULLY PULPIT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF JOURNALISM

By Doris Kearns Goodwin

Simon & Schuster, $40

After the tour de force that is “Team of Rivals,” the source material for Steven Spielberg’s film “Lincoln,” any new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is guaranteed to excite history buffs.

That her new work, “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” is every bit “Rivals’ ” rival is cause for celebration.

“Bully Pulpit” is a multicharacter biography weaving the lives and careers of historic giants with those of often obscure yet pivotal bit players to tell the epochal story of the Progressive Era, that remarkable period of reform when the American public softened its long-held belief that the government that governs least governs best.

Goodwin explores the consequential nexus of a revolution in journalism — the birth of the investigative journalist epitomized by McClure’s Magazine founder S.S. McClure and his star writers, Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens and William Allen White, with a new breed of activist politicians embodied by the human hurricane, Theodore Roosevelt, and his exceptionally competent and lovable wingman, William Howard Taft.

That Taft is hardly remembered today beyond his massive girth and gigantic White House bathtub is our loss. Fortunately “Bully Pulpit” goes a long way to restoring Taft’s rightful place as an American public servant to be emulated and honored.

We are also in Goodwin’s debt for introducing contemporary readers to one of our most remarkable first ladies, Nellie Taft, a woman far ahead of her time in attitudes, interests and ambitions.

But as always it is Roosevelt who steals the show.

Nearly a century after his death, Roosevelt still seems more a work of fiction than a flesh-and-blood person; think Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones had gone to Harvard, been president of the United States, and authored 14 books while winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Goodwin presents Roosevelt warts and all — his brilliance, passion for justice, good humor, mania and periodic eruptions of vindictive egotism.

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While occasionally bogging down in minutiae, “The Bully Pulpit” reveals the devil’s in the details, rewarding a determined reader with a comprehensive understanding of the complexity and context in which the ferocious battles for reform were fought.

The centerpiece of the story is the intersection of the careers of Taft and Roosevelt.

Taft was an Ohio lawyer whose dream of sitting on the Supreme Court was thwarted again and again by his own competence and well-deserved reputation for integrity, as well as his wife’s grander vision.

Roosevelt, New York’s bull-in-the-china-shop assemblyman, police commissioner, governor and ultimately vice president under the doomed William McKinley, seemed predestined for the presidency.

Roosevelt’s friendship with the sedentary Taft made for one of the most unusual yet effective governing teams in American history.

Chronicling — and in many instances directing — the reform movement are McClure’s star writers, whose brilliant exposes of industrial and political abuses often set the agenda for Roosevelt, Taft and like-minded reformers.

As Roosevelt reluctantly leaves the presidency he hands it off to his trusted and beloved friend, Taft, setting the stage for one of the ugliest breakups in American political history.

Personalities as much as events drove a deep and bitter wedge between these two great friends, culminating in the historic election of 1912, when Roosevelt split from the Republican Party, toppling Taft from the presidency and opening the door for a fellow progressive, the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. The Roosevelt-Taft rift makes the later chapters painful to read.

But, spoiler alert: There is a happy ending for Taft, for Roosevelt and for the American people.

Doug McIntyre is a columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. He can be heard 5-9 a.m. weekdays on KABC 790 AM.